Rest is yours to have

You Don’t Have to Earn Your Rest

Rest shouldn’t be the reward we receive only after we’ve exhausted ourselves. I have noticed something slightly strange about the way we talk about rest. We say things like:

I’ll sit down after I finish this.

I’ll take a break once everything is done.

I’ll have an easier weekend because I’ve worked so hard this week.

As though rest is something we have to qualify for. The problem is that everything is rarely done. There is always another email. Another load of laundry. Something that needs organising. Someone who needs an answer. A cupboard that could be tidied. A task we’ve been meaning to get around to.

So we keep going. And rest keeps moving further down the list.

When Did Being Busy Become a Good Thing?

Ask someone how they’ve been and one of the most common answers is: Busy. We say it almost automatically. Sometimes even proudly. A full calendar can make us feel productive and needed. An empty afternoon, on the other hand, can make us wonder whether we should be doing something useful with it. We’ve become remarkably good at filling gaps.

Five minutes waiting somewhere? Check the phone.

A quiet evening? Catch up on something.

A free Sunday? Perhaps that’s the perfect opportunity to reorganise the house.

Even our hobbies can become productive.

Read more books.

Walk more steps.

Finish the craft project.

Complete the journal.

Learn something new.

There is apparently always something we could be improving. Rest doesn’t always look like sleep. When we hear the word rest, we often imagine sleeping or lying on the sofa. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need.

But rest can look like many things. It might be sitting quietly with a cup of coffee. Taking a slow walk without counting the steps. Spending an afternoon making something. Reading a book that teaches you absolutely nothing. Watering your plants. Baking because you feel like baking. Looking through old photographs. Sitting somewhere and watching the world go by.

The activity itself isn’t necessarily important.

What matters is that for a little while, nothing is being demanded from you.

Not Everything Has to Be Useful

This can be surprisingly difficult.

We’re used to asking what something is for. Exercise improves our health. Reading improves our knowledge. Meditation improves our mind. Hobbies develop skills. Even rest is sometimes sold to us as a way to become more productive afterwards.

But what if something doesn’t improve anything?

What if you spend an hour doing something simply because you enjoyed the hour? That is still an hour well spent. Life doesn’t have to justify every minute.

The Guilt of Doing Nothing

Perhaps you’ve experienced this. You finally sit down. There is technically nothing urgent that needs doing. And instead of enjoying it, a little voice starts listing everything you could be doing.

You should answer that message. You should organise that drawer. You should exercise. You should prepare for tomorrow. You should do something useful.

Sometimes the hardest part of resting isn’t finding the time.

It’s allowing ourselves to use the time without feeling guilty about it.

A Quiet Life Isn’t an Empty Life

Slow living is sometimes misunderstood as wanting to escape responsibility. I don’t think that’s what it means at all. Most of us have jobs, families, bills, deadlines and people who depend on us. Life cannot always be slow. There will be busy weeks. There will be difficult months. There will be days when everything happens at once. The aim isn’t to create a permanently peaceful existence. That’s probably unrealistic.

Perhaps it’s simply to stop treating every empty space as something that needs to be filled.

Leave Some White Space

I like thinking about life the way I think about a page. If every centimetre is filled, nothing has room to breathe. The blank areas aren’t wasted. They’re what allow everything else to be seen. Perhaps our days need a little white space too. Ten minutes before everyone wakes up. An afternoon with nothing planned. A walk without headphones. A meal without the phone. A hobby with no goal attached. A Sunday that isn’t optimised.

Small spaces where nothing particularly impressive happens.

You Are Allowed to Stop Before Everything Is Finished

This may be the one I’m still learning.

Stopping doesn’t have to mean you’ve completed everything.

Sometimes you stop because you’ve done enough for today.

The email can wait.

The washing can wait.

The unfinished project will still be there tomorrow.

There will always be something else that could be done.

If we wait until life gives us permission to rest, we may wait a very long time.

Sometimes we have to give ourselves permission instead.

Rest Doesn’t Need to Become Another Routine

There’s one trap worth avoiding.

Don’t turn resting into another thing you have to do correctly.

You don’t need a perfect evening routine.

You don’t need candles, herbal tea and a beautifully arranged reading corner.

You don’t need to schedule exactly thirty minutes of mindfulness.

And you certainly don’t need to photograph it.

Some days rest might look lovely.

Other days it might mean sitting on the sofa watching something completely forgettable.

Both count.

Perhaps Enough Is Enough

There will always be more.

More work we could do.

More things we could improve.

More places we could go.

More goals we could set.

More things we could buy.

More versions of ourselves we could try to become.

But occasionally, perhaps the better question isn’t:

What else should I be doing?

It’s:

Have I done enough for today? And sometimes the answer is yes.

Not because everything is finished. Simply because you’re finished for now.

Sometime this week, leave a little part of your day deliberately empty.

Don’t immediately decide what you’ll do with it.

Don’t turn it into another self-care task.

Make a drink. Sit somewhere comfortable. Make something if you feel like it. Do absolutely nothing if you don’t.

And if that little voice tells you that you should be doing something more useful, perhaps remind yourself:

Rest is useful too.

You don’t have to earn it.